


Bells All Ring, Horns All Blow

by fishyspots



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baking, Episode: s04e13 Merry Christmas Johnny Rose, Holidays, Idiots in Love, Kissing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Rampant Misuse of Timezones, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:54:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27764056
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fishyspots/pseuds/fishyspots
Summary: “Um, I can’t—I’m not going home." Patrick says. "Not, ah, not this time. There’s a lot of ice in the forecast.” It feels just like the excuse it is when he says it out loud, and he remembers his mom’s disappointedohover the phone earlier when he told her the same thing.To his relief, David nods. Stevie looks at him funny, but she’s usually doing that so he doesn’t take it too personally. “That’s probably good,” David says.“Just because you don’t want to move the overflow shelving on the twenty-sixth,” Patrick says, but David holds up a hand.“It’ll be fun to have you around,” David says. It’s more honest than he usually is, which he realizes a few seconds after Patrick does, lips twisting up in self-deprecation.Patrick nods hesitantly as a plan takes shape in his head. He thought for David’s birthday that maybe...but he can try again. He can do it right this time.Or, Patrick and David find a different way to each other.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 79
Kudos: 231
Collections: Schitt's Creek: Frozen Over (2020)





	Bells All Ring, Horns All Blow

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [SCFrozenOver2020](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/SCFrozenOver2020) collection. 



> The biggest, most effusive thanks to [redacted] for listening to all my plot woes, dialogue woes, and writing woes. This story truly wouldn't exist without you. And then after all that, you beta'd too? Thanks to [redacted] for the best Ray jokes. Another huge thanks to [redacted] because writing makeouts is hard and you helped me figure out how to do it. 
> 
> And thanks to the prompter, who asked for "Patrick and David don't get together on David's birthday, and end up just being friends. Instead, when Patrick can’t return home because of the cold weather, he and David end up spending a lot of time together outside of work that brings them even closer." Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Title from "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" which has been done (and done well) many times. The versions I listened to were Etta James and Kacey Musgraves.

“What are we toasting this time?” Stevie scoots into the booth next to Patrick. Both of them have learned that David’s gestures usually take up the entire width of the table, elbows of the person sitting next to him notwithstanding.

Patrick dips his mozzarella stick into the marinara. “We’re ahead of schedule, numbers-wise, for this quarter.”

David wiggles a little in his seat; it would be endearing if Patrick let himself think words like that about his business partner. “I still maintain that it was all those workshops.”

“Might have been the sales, too,” Patrick says. He takes a bite and therefore cannot swallow around his mouthful of cheese before David insults the ornaments Patrick ordered.

“I don’t have anything against the Nutcracker, but making the entire cast feels too niche even for me.” David slides his wine to Stevie, who takes a sip from his glass, shakes her head, and beckons Twyla over so she can order something else.

“And if it’s too niche for David, then we’re really in trouble,” Stevie says.

“Emilie just seemed so confident that they would sell.” Patrick rests his face in his hands. This is what he gets for trying to impress David with his vendor relations. This is what he gets for trying to impress David _period,_ it seems.

“Emilie normally has really good instincts,” David moves to reassure him, so Patrick must have shown too much of his hand with that reaction. “Not so much so that I would have let her get away with that size of an order, but I get it.”

“Is Emilie the one with the—” Stevie makes a vague gesture that David nods at. Patrick doesn’t bother trying to parse it. He’s long since learned that there are some parts of David and Stevie’s relationship he’ll never unspool.

“Luckily for us, Emilie is traveling for the holidays. We might stand a fighting chance at moving all of her ornaments before she gets back.”

David lifts a mozzarella stick expectantly, somehow not noticing how the act flip-flops Patrick’s insides. Stevie lifts her own to join him. Patrick clinks his mozzarella stick against David and Stevie’s. He’s getting used to the twinge that accompanies this action, one that he didn’t really intend for all three of them at first but that he now enjoys. Stevie’s a surprisingly good friend despite, or maybe because of, her prickliness and the way that it mirrors David’s.

“That’s one way to celebrate,” Stevie says through a bite that’s mostly freezer burn if it’s anything like Patrick’s own. “Meanwhile, I will be drinking my usual case of wine.”

“What about you, Patrick?” David asks. Stevie nods and leans back so she can look at him.

He balks in the face of their scrutiny. “Um, I can’t—I’m not going home. Not, ah, not this time. There’s a lot of ice in the forecast.” It feels just like the excuse it is when he says it out loud, and he remembers his mom’s disappointed _oh_ over the phone earlier when he told her the same thing.

To his relief, David nods. Stevie looks at him funny, but she’s usually doing that so he doesn’t take it too personally. “That’s probably good,” David says.

“Just because you don’t want to move the overflow shelving on the twenty-sixth,” Patrick says, but David holds up a hand.

“It’ll be fun to have you around,” David says. It’s more honest than he usually is, which he realizes a few seconds after Patrick does, lips twisting up in self-deprecation.

Patrick nods hesitantly as a plan takes shape in his head. He thought for David’s birthday that maybe...but he can try again. He can do it right this time.

He’s got a week to get everything ready. So, no pressure.

* * *

David winces at the wreath on Ray’s door but knocks anyway. Orange and silver ornaments are, well. A choice. That Ray has made.

“David!” There’s a towel thrown over Ray’s shoulder, dusted with flour. “You’re just in time to sample some of my famous gingerbread.”

After literal years in town, David should be used to the sincerity that everyone just holds out openly. Without worry that they’ll be judged for it. “I just came to drop off Patrick’s laptop.”

“Well, Patrick is in the shower at the moment, so you’re stuck with me until he’s done,” Ray says brightly.

“I mean, I can just go,” David says. “There’s not—he just left it at the store, and I knew he probably wanted it. So I have it. For him.” He needs Ray to start talking, a thing he never thought he’d need, or he’s going to implode here among neon ornaments and hand-embroidered dish towels.

“Nonsense,” Ray says. “Besides, I could use your opinion on whether there’s too much molasses.”

David wants to protest the idea of spending time with Ray one-on-one, but he also wants to know if there’s anything different about homemade cookies. “I mean, if it would help _you._ ”

Ray disappears into the kitchen and comes back with a plate full of cookies. David can’t decide if they’re meant to be shared, so he sticks to two for now. Three, because the smaller cookies are really half a bite at best.

“Those are some interesting buildings,” David says when it’s clear that Ray is content to chatter about the benefits of fresh ginger over the store’s seasoning until either Patrick comes downstairs or David takes matters into his own hands. The holiday village on the mantle is cute, if eclectic, which is no less than David expects at this point. He gets off the couch for a closer look. There’s a photography storefront next to a Christmas tree lot, and he squints, leaning in to read the tiny, detailed signs. “Are these your businesses?”

“Good eye, David,” Ray says approvingly. “I just added the dance studio this year. I’m hoping that the ballroom dance classes will take off before Valentine’s Day. I asked Patrick if you would be interested in selling vouchers at the store, but he never got back to me.”

“Wow,” David manages. “I’m going to have to give that a think. Actually, are you also selling these? Because we don’t do much custom ordering at the store, but the detail you’ve gotten here is great.”

Ray shakes his head; he looks almost offended. David didn’t think Ray was this flappable. “I can’t be expected to do everything, David.”

“Sorry?”

“Honestly,” Ray says. “That would require a whole new course, and the overhead for the materials alone would be astronomical.”

David casts about desperately for a change of subject before he says something that will get his gingerbread privileges revoked. “Who’s the person this Ray realtor is showing the house to?”

Ray leans in next to David. “Oh,” he says, voice amiable once more. “That’s investment property Ray.”

“I see.”

“What do you see?” Patrick asks from behind them. David jumps, blessedly restraining his hands just enough to keep them from knocking over nurse Ray, which is hypocritical because it would take much longer to get certified for that than it would to paint some ceramics.

“Your laptop,” David says lightly. “At the store after you left.” He turns to look at Patrick and vehemently keeps his breath from catching in his throat at the water dripping from the nape of his neck onto his shoulders. Patrick’s all flushed from the shower, and David needs a minute or several to work through that. “So. Here it is.”

“Thanks, David.” Patrick puts emphasis on both words, which is frankly unfair. He’s always so earnest. It’s a good idea, your business (it was); do you need help lifting that (he did); I’m not here for your sister (he wasn’t).

“I was surprised you left it,” David admits. “Isn’t it a box you check on your little closing list?”

Patrick coughs. David assumes that Ray made the tea his business partner is drinking and spares a brief moment to worry about the four and a half cookies he’s consumed and their effects on him. They really can't afford to get sick right now. “I normally do, yes,” Patrick says. “But today I didn’t do the list.”

“You didn’t do the list?” David isn’t proud of the pitch his voice ends up at, but in his defense, he trusts Patrick to double-check his double-checks of the locks and fridge. How is he supposed to sleep tonight now?

“I’m sensing that I’ve upset you.” Patrick interrupts his worries about too-warm cheese and body milk thieves.

“I’m not upset. But I should run back to the store and check a few things.”

“David, I double-checked the locks.”

“And the fridge?” David asks cautiously. “Because we have that eggnog on special, and Ronnie’s coming in for three bottles tomorrow morning. Even if it’s a mercy to spare her from drinking eggs on a holiday, we should still—”

“And the fridge,” Patrick confirms quickly.

“David, I’m surprised that you’re not in the holiday spirit,” Ray says. “I thought you loved Christmas! You were already celebrating in August with that charming performance.”

“Nope,” David says quickly. “I have no memory of that.”

“Charming performance?” Patrick asks, because when it comes to sniffing out things to poke at David about he’s like a bloodhound.

“Asbestos Fest, right?” Ray taps his chin. “Your mom had that wig.”

“My mother almost always has a wig,” David says. It’s even true, for all that it’s still a deflection.

“You performed with your mom?” Patrick’s eyes are doing something melty that David can’t take in face-on.

“I think there's somewhere else I need to be immediately.” David grabs one more cookie from Ray’s tray and makes for the door.

“Wait.” Patrick is clearly holding back a laugh, and David would be offended if he didn’t deeply appreciate the effort. “Can you give me the over/under on the odds of me getting a repeat performance? Because if I’ve got a chance, then I want to make the most of it.”

“I do have an over,” David says pleasantly. “Over my dead body.”

“Maybe since it's Christmas Eve,” Patrick muses. “Or tomorrow, after I’ve gotten a few drinks into you.”

Embarrassment prickles at the back of David’s neck. He used to love being talked about until he realized that you couldn’t make people say only nice things and having people say nice things was sort of the whole point. “I regret to inform you that no amount of alcohol can compete with a guilt trip from my mother. And she will not be joining us tomorrow.”

Patrick hums. “We’ll see.”

* * *

“Stevie, did you see David perform with his mom?” Patrick asks mostly to see what David’s face will do and partly because he’s worried that what he has to tell David tonight will change things. He’s both reminding David of their friendship and getting his fill before he puts it all in jeopardy.

Stevie lights up. “Oh, you mean Asbestos Fest? Tragically, I stopped going to that fundraiser years ago when they made gray cotton candy and scarred me for life.”

David sighs, ostensibly in relief. “I told you that you were out of options,” he says from where he’s rearranging the seasonal candles. They were done by color before, but David shook his head this morning and muttered something about scent profiles before overhauling the display. Patrick privately thinks it’s a little late in the game to switch things up, but he’s choosing to pick his battles.

“Less tragically,” Stevie continues, “I talked to Alexis.” Patrick’s pretty sure his ears physically perk up. “And she said Moira saved a bunch of videos from the house. Apparently David’s performances were more important than her birth certificate? I don’t know, she said something about skewed priorities and middle names and I got lost.”

“This is in the top twenty worst pieces of news I’ve gotten on a holiday,” David mumbles.

Patrick senses that he has a lot of work to do to redeem this day; selfishly, he’s going to wait to start that work until after he sees a video.

Stevie taps at her phone and tilts the screen toward Patrick in invitation. He leans in to watch until David reaches between them and steals the phone. “You’ll get this back after the New Year,” he informs them gravely. “Or maybe you can collectively forget you've seen anything as a belated half-and-half gift to me.”

“You'll give me my phone back as a gift to you?” Stevie asks.

“I’ll give your phone back sans one horrifying video.” David corrects her, then walks toward the back room, presumably to delete all the evidence.

“If he thinks my only copy is on that phone, he’s kidding himself,” Stevie whispers. “Oh, speaking of the Roses and the grip they collectively have on reality, did David have any decorations ready to go for tonight?”

“Why would he?” The agitation David had shaken off at the store’s threshold this morning starts to make sense for Patrick.

“Mr. Rose got it in his head to host a big Christmas party tonight, apparently.” Stevie shrugs and picks up a few bottles of wine. She sets them on the counter next to a container of tapenade. At Patrick’s raised eyebrows, she says, “I’m participating. I’m on snacks.”

“You’re going to need more than that,” Patrick says. He can see the steps to what he has to say later tonight shifting in front of him. He wants to do this for David, to take this out of his hands not because he can’t handle it but because he clearly doesn’t want to. “Give me a few minutes and I can get you a case of wine from the back. And we’ve got a lot of decorations here that I can bring by around five. What time does he want this party to start?”

David pops his head out the door to the back room. “You don’t have to enable my dad,” he says. His shoulders inch up toward his ears and he slices a hand through the air. “It's not like he cares about the holidays. He breezed right through Hanukkah and woke up this morning just so—he gets like this sometimes. He gets an idea in his head and is mad that everyone else isn’t already on the same page, even if he doesn’t—” David cuts off the flow of words sharply, biting his lip. “You don’t have to, is the point.”

“I’m happy to,” Patrick says. “Christmas with your family sounds like fun.” And then later, under the Christmas lights that Patrick will string up, after David’s had a glass of wine and spent some time with him and Stevie, Patrick will pull him into his and Alexis’s room and tell him what he’s been dying to say for months now. The question, _do you want to go on a date,_ or maybe the statement, _I really like you,_ swirl around his head. He should probably figure out the words themselves, but he’ll save that until after everything’s ready for the party.

Except it’s not any easier later, it turns out, because Johnny has a very exacting and expensive vision for someone who’s getting all of this for free. Patrick barely has time to change into a sweater that’s not soaked through with sweat and speared with tiny evergreen needles from the tree Patrick begged Ray to sell Johnny at cost before Roland and Jocelyn walk into the motel room.

David walks in a few steps behind, grimacing from what Patrick can only assume was a lopsided conversation on the walk over. He proves Patrick’s suspicions right when he sees him, making a beeline for him and letting out the sigh that forecasts a rant. “Did you know,” he says pointedly, “that the Schitts find popcorn balls highly erotic?”

“That must be very difficult information to carry,” Patrick says. 

“And not because of the shape, of course,” David continues, a smile playing around his lips as he talks that Patrick knows from experience he’ll deny if pressed.

“Of course,” Patrick says. He barely restrains himself from propping his chin on his hand and sighing. It’s a close call, though.

“No,” David continues, uncaring of Patrick’s inner monologue and its desire to spill his feelings all over his business partner, who’s wearing a lovely gray sweater and who looks radiant in the golden lights that Patrick tried to string artfully around the wig wall. “It’s the texture that really gets Roland going. Oh yes, it’s Roland’s particular favorite. Jocelyn prefers a nice smooth cranberry sauce, but what can you do?” He raises his eyebrows in an exaggerated show of frustration.

“What indeed,” Patrick says.

David’s eyebrows tip down and draw together. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on.” Patrick swallows past all the words congealing in his throat. “I mean, this all went on, obviously, but nothing. Now. No things are going on now.”

David’s face is so damn expressive. Patrick can trace the suspicion, then dawning understanding, then slight regret. “Were my parents really awful today?” He asks sympathetically. “They can get that way sometimes when they’re single-minded. My mom once locked me and Alexis in our nursery for four days because she wanted to get used to screaming before her horror movie started filming. She said our eardrums were too delicate.”

Patrick shakes his head and files away that vaguely horrifying anecdote for later. “They weren’t _really_ awful.” He winces. “Your dad can get kind of focused?”

“Dickish,” David affirms. “He can get really dickish when you aren’t doing what he wants but you don’t know what that’s supposed to be.” He sounds like he’s speaking from experience.

“He just wanted everybody to be together,” Patrick says. He doesn’t want to spend much more time talking about David’s parents and the various ways they’ve both watched Patrick too closely and given him too little direction all day. “And hey,” he grabs one of the glasses of prosecco off of Moira’s dressing table. “Now we can have our drinks.”

David presses his lips together to hide the smile, but his eyes give it away. They always do. “I suppose we can.” He opens his mouth to say something else, but Jocelyn taps him on the shoulder before he does.

“David,” she stretches his name out like she always does. “So nice of you to help your mom with this.”

“Mm.” David drinks half his glass down quickly before replying. “Patrick's the one who did this. I was at the store.”

“Oh?” Jocelyn turns to take Patrick in, something assessing in her eyes. “I didn’t know you had this much holiday spirit.”

Patrick shifts from foot to foot. He’s not going to bare his soul to Jocelyn, no matter how much he wishes that he could. For one thing, David’s still standing next to him. “I just wanted everyone to have a good time.”

“That’s nice,” Jocelyn says. “Were you also in charge of snacks? Because I was wondering if there was—”

“There’s cranberry chutney with the bread and cheese.” Patrick can feel the tips of his ears heating.

“Interesting.” Jocelyn’s voice is easygoing, pleasant. “I was actually looking for a cheese ball?” I would have brought one from home, but David and his parents know how well they tie a party together, so I didn’t think I needed to.”

“So sorry I didn’t share my knowledge,” David says.

Patrick decides to end this conversation before Roland can add his two cents. Especially because the baby has a habit of crying anytime Patrick gets within ten feet of it. Him. “I was just going to show David the decorations,” he says. “They all came from the store, and I never get to really show off my taste.”

“Oh, your taste,” David says under his breath, just loud enough for Patrick to hear.

Patrick bumps his shoulder against David’s. “But I hope you find some decent snacks,” he tells Jocelyn. Then he pulls David by the arm so he’s more firmly underneath the lights. There’s no mistletoe, because Moira muttered something disparaging about Susan Lucci and nefarious schemes when he mentioned the idea. But he still likes where David ends up, lit from behind with the laughter of their town surrounding them. David takes the room in, eyes lingering on the wires and bulbs framing the doors and surrounding the tree. Patrick’s pretty impressed with how well the tree is holding up after his hours of alpine surgery. It looks even better in the glow of David’s attention, but Patrick suspects that most things would.

“This is cute,” David says lightly, “but it’s almost a theme party. And you know I’m allergic to those.”

Patrick snorts into his wine, which is surprisingly palatable even though it came from the store and is going to reflect on their bottom line. Or at least Johnny hasn’t said anything about it not affecting their bottom line.

“Very passable,” David informs him. “Though we only have this many multicolored lights left for tonight because I _told_ you that we shouldn’t have stocked them. White is the way to go.”

“Are you really questioning my decorating? After I got all this together?”

David’s nose wrinkles the way it does when he knows what the polite thing to say is and he’s consciously choosing not to do it. “Questioning your priorities, maybe.”

He’s impossible. Patrick has to tell him. He has to know the answer. He reaches for David’s elbow, prepared to move him again, this time through the adjoining door and into David’s room so they can have a little privacy—a big ask in this town, but possible if they keep their standards low—when he gets the words out.

But a throat clears behind Patrick, and he immediately regrets showing David all around the motel room like he’s a kid looking for praise instead of getting down to business. Not _that_ kind of business. The business that might lead to them eventually, one day getting down to business. Anyway. He turns to see Stevie holding one of the bottles of cabernet, which she’s apparently claimed for herself and abandoned the pretense of using a glass to drink. “What are we doing in the middle of the room?” She asks. “We’re normally hug-the-wall people.” She looks Patrick up and down exaggeratedly. “Two of us are, at least.”

“Stevie makes a relevant point,” David informs Patrick. They troop over to the door Patrick was about to take David through and lean against it, watching people come and go. David’s making Patrick laugh so hard that he’s squeaking out breaths with his impression of Bob leaving the garage at all hours of the day when the Jazzagals circle up to perform. The music is soft and beautiful, though Patrick’s never been the biggest fan of this carol. Years of playing a wise man in Christmas programs can wear a person’s tolerance down.

David jostles Stevie when they hit the first refrain, smiling openly now that he’s a few glasses of wine in. Patrick leans around so he can participate in mocking her. Turnabout is fair play, and she called him a tax attorney last week. As if he was ever anything but an accountant before he came to town.

“What?” Stevie says defensively, eyes wet. “It’s just nice. Nothing’s happening.”

Patrick would normally pass Stevie off to Twyla in the hopes that this rare display of emotion would aid him in his mission of getting the two of them to act on the crush that’s almost so thick it’s a presence in every room they’re all in, but Twyla’s singing and Stevie is about to turn weepy.

David beats him to saying so, though. “Looks like you’re crying.”

Patrick looks longingly at the door. He’s pretty sure Alexis and Ted are in there now, because they disappeared a few minutes after saying hello and goodbye to Johnny. There was some kerfuffle about whether or not they’d come, and honestly they might have left, but it’s hard to keep track of this family. And that’s not even taking into account all the ways that they say everything except what they mean. He tries not to sigh audibly as he pats Stevie’s hair. From experience, he knows that it will take both him and David to get her second bottle of wine out of her hands and to pour her into her own bed with minimal fussing and existential discussion.

He looks at the door one more time as they all troop out of the motel a few hours later. It was a good plan.

* * *

“What does this entail, exactly?”

David hands the case of wine to Patrick. “Twelve bottles of wine. One for each day of that song.”

“And _this_ is her holiday tradition?”

David sets his chin on his hand, exaggerating the movement for Patrick’s benefit. “Did you always go home for the holidays before this year? Maybe do a secret santa with all your cousins?”

“Point,” Patrick says reluctantly. “I guess I can spare two weeks for Stevie’s tradition.”

“Oh, it’s not really twelve whole days,” David says. “We aren’t patient enough for that. And it’s best not to give Stevie too much time. She gets mopey otherwise.”

“So how much wine do we do?”

David pats Patrick’s shoulder gently.

Later, after they’re past the lords jumping or whatever the fuck in this song that David’s pretty sure Stevie’s turning into innuendo, Patrick drops his head into David’s lap and giggles against David’s thigh. David would be scandalized if he could work up the energy. Stevie’s singing along to Kacey Musgraves under her breath, a bottle tucked under her arm. Patrick really got into the spirit of the day. Spirits. Whatever. But it’s a novel change for David to be the least messy of the three of them. He doesn’t hate the feeling.

“David.” Patrick sits up suddenly. It’s a mercy, really, because one of David’s hands had been drifting thoughtlessly toward the place where the hair tapers into Patrick’s neck and that would have been...something. Something he is both too sober and too tipsy to examine fully.

“Patrick,” he says seriously, watching the apples of Patrick’s cheeks get more pronounced as he smiles. “Can I help you with something?”

“You help me with lots of things,” Patrick says in that way he has, that far-too-honest way.

And now David’s really thrilled he’s not drunker than he is, because Patrick certainly didn’t sign up for his garden hose of insecurities and neuroses. “I don’t know about—”

Patrick presses a warm palm against David’s mouth. “Shh. None of that. None of those words. Only good words.”

“Good words?”

Patrick nods. “Only the good words.”

David rolls his lips in and bites down. The good words are hard. He reaches for the friendly, teasing place where they normally operate. “So what are some good words? Just so I know what I’m allowed to say.”

Patrick taps David’s nose, and David likes to think that he’s more dignified than he is but even he can admit that his eyes cross. “That I really like you.”

“That you _what_?”

“David.” Patrick’s voice goes raw the way that drunk people always get, saying things that they think are true in the moment but that horrify them hours later. David would know. He’s said a few things in that voice himself. “I really, really like you.”

“I think you’re very, um." David can't do this, so he settles for something that's true but won't be too revealing on the off chance Patrick brings this conversation up later. "I like you, too.” He rubs Patrick’s shoulder, then pats lightly twice. Patrick’s breath evens out almost immediately, like he just had to say one thing that would shift David’s world just the smallest bit to the left before he could rest.

And then a few hours later, when Stevie has declared her celebration complete, David and Stevie are passing a water bottle back and forth in the bed while Patrick snores horrifically loudly on the couch.

“He said _what?_

David sniffs and takes a sip. “I just told you what he said.”

“I can’t believe he finally got it together,” Stevie muses.

“Finally?” David sits up a little straighter. “Did he tell you something that I don’t know about?”

Stevie shakes her head. “I mean, you know that I always thought—”

“Stop.” David doesn’t want to have this conversation again, because it always leads to Stevie getting a look in her eye that means she knows something he doesn’t, except that she doesn’t. She doesn’t know anything. She just suspects, and Stevie’s suspicions are dangerous and patently wrong. They give him way too much credit. “We can’t do this again.”

“David.” Stevie sits up now too, and turns to face him fully. This is worse, because now David is going to have to look directly at Stevie when she says things that will only give him false hope. “You should say something to him. This means something.”

And it’s like a sore tooth, really, going back to that feeling that Stevie still pushes on him sometimes. The same feeling she stirred up and almost ruined everything with when she tried to get his hopes up on his birthday. She’d stared at him, eyes wide like they are now, and said that Patrick had invited him on a date. Patrick had seemed surprised Stevie was there, sure, but that was probably more about him assuming that David was pathetic and didn’t have any friends since even his family wouldn’t bother spending time with him on his birthday. And then he’d made a crack about paying for dinner as David’s present, and it was lovely and platonic and friendly up until he left and he and Stevie drove back to the motel. She argued Patrick’s cause all the way home until David had practically begged her to shut up as her gift to him. “Please stop. This doesn’t mean—it’s not different.”

Stevie nods slowly. “I know it’s not different.”

“Won’t saying something just make things weird or awkward?” Stevie hates discomfort almost as much as David does, so focusing on that might be his best bet.

“Well, you’ll still be around,” Stevie says. “So it’ll probably still be weird and awkward.”

“Please can we drop this?” David can’t afford to raise and lower his hopes like this constantly. He just needs to accept that they won’t be anything more. At the beginning, he thought—but no.

“It’s not different.” Stevie snatches the water bottle like the gremlin she is. “Because he’s liked you since then. Since your birthday.”

“You have to stop. I can’t let—you have to stop.” David slides down under the blankets and pulls the edges up close to his chin.

“You can’t pretend to fall asleep just to get out of this conversation.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.” David pushes at the pillow below him to get more comfortable. “Consider it a very short coma.”

Stevie snorts and turns off the light. “I still like this for you, you know.”

David pulls the blanket over his head.

* * *

Patrick turns from where he’s stacking a few boxes of holiday overstock in the back room when he hears the bell over the door ring. The sound isn’t helping his headache.

“Hello?”

Patrick puffs out his cheeks because sighing is too much, even when he’s alone, and goes to greet Ted. “Hey, what can I help you with?”

“Hey, bud.” Ted sets a jar of their unisex cologne on the counter. “I’m here to make a return.”

“Not a fan of the scent?” Patrick can’t blame Ted for that. The cologne is a little sharp and smoky for his taste, too. He resolutely does not think about the way David had sprayed a bottle just like this one on his wrist and held it up in front of Patrick’s nose, saying _don’t you love this?_ It wasn’t too strong then.

“It’s not that,” Ted says. “Alexis got me the same thing for my birthday.”

Patrick chews the inside of his cheek so he doesn’t smile or wince. He can’t decide which reaction is going to rise to the surface first. “That’s tough,” he says instead. “Will she be hurt that you returned this?”

“She knows I’m a rebel without a _Claus._ And it’s sweet, honestly,” Ted says. “Alexis tried this out on me when you all first opened. The smell really _scent_ me back to that day.”

Something about Alexis’s misguided but sentimental gift makes Patrick melt. It’s a very Rose thing to have one’s heart in the right place and so totally miss the mark. “That’s nice.”

“What did you get David?” Ted asks. “I know what he was going to give you, and honestly I’m surprised you’re not wearing that sweater today. It was so soft.”

“What do you mean, he got me something?” Opportunistic hope stirs in his stomach. “He never gave me a gift.”

“Oh,” Ted says quickly. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was for Stevie, or Alexis, even? He came by to drop off those holiday collars a month back, and I thought that he said...something different.”

“Did he say it was for me?” Patrick is already dreading how this conversation will look after it’s distorted by the town grapevine, but he has to get an answer. “Did he say why he was getting me a present?”

Ted holds up his hands. “All I know is what I was told.”

Patrick loosens his fingers, which have curled into fists and are pressing into the counter. This isn’t an interrogation. “Sorry,” he says. “I, ah, didn’t know about that.”

Ted’s face is open the way it always is, and it’s refreshing. “I know you two have been _pine_ -ing for a while now.” He says it like it’s common knowledge, which Patrick senses would make David itchy. He’s feeling a little itchy himself, to tell the truth.

“We aren’t, um, that. We aren’t pining.” Patrick gears himself up for words that always burn on the way out. “David went on a date last month.”

Ted hums noncommittally. “Alexis said he was back at the motel by seven.”

“I didn’t know that.” Patrick can’t look at Ted directly. “He didn’t tell me that part.” He should have asked, maybe. He should have talked to David before he agreed to go on other dates. He could have done a few things differently. But mostly Patrick’s furious with himself for the way that he did it. He spent so long waiting for it to be right. Waiting for the right time. He wants David to know—fuck, he’s wanted David to know for half a year now—but David deserves for it to be romantic and wonderful and special and not just a messy half-coherent mumble into his neck.

“Well, he was,” Ted says, pulling Patrick back to the present, where he’s taking an eon to do a simple return.

“It’s hard,” Patrick says, because if he’s going to spill too much to someone who he only marginally considers a friend then he’s going to really go for it. “I just put myself out there for him a few nights ago, and I don’t think,” he shakes his head and wipes some dust off of the register, “I don’t think that I can do that again. I don’t think he wants me.”

Ted presses his lips together before he opens them to speak. “Did Alexis ever tell you about how we got back together?”

Patrick and Alexis don’t talk much, really, except for when she comes in to stare meaningfully and wring her hands at David while stealing their lip balms. “She didn’t.”

“It was because of David.”

Patrick works at not perking up at the mere mention of his business partner. Still: “What did David do?”

“I’ll spare you the specifics. But I can tell you that he’s got his own stuff. How he sees himself is—” Ted shakes his head. “What I can tell you,” he says, his unselfconscious smile stretching across his face, “is that when you’ve got it, you shouldn’t let it go.”

Patrick breathes out.

“And, Patrick?” Ted picks up the cologne and slides it back into the pocket of his coat. “You’ve got it.”

* * *

“Why are you here?” Alexis looks up from applying a mask to glare at David. “I thought I had the room tonight.”

“Why would you think that you had the room tonight?” David sets down his bag and pulls out his journal. Patrick had been frustratingly against changing the holiday displays out until after the new year, but David’s about to have creative control again. And he has some thoughts.

“Please, David.” Alexis turns from the mirror just so she can roll her eyes. “You’re, like, always with Patrick and Stevie. Or just Patrick.”

“Well, I’m not with Stevie or Patrick tonight,” David says, stridently rejecting the rest of what Alexis is implying.

“Oh, you poor thing.” Alexis actually might be leaving the bathroom, which is just—David doesn’t want any of that. “Where’d your little boyfriend go? Did you get overwhelming? Did you try to be exclusive too fast?”

David holds up his hand before she can keep listing the ways he’s blown relationships up before, especially because that’s not what this is. And because he really doesn’t like to remember the Vespa incident and he’s pretty sure that’s next on her list. “We aren’t dating? So this is not—we don’t need to do this.”

Alexis tilts her head and then, fuck, she steps out of the bathroom. There’s green goo all over her hands and it would be both hazardous to his knits and frankly wasteful if any of that La Mer got on him. “Is he telling you he just wants it to be casual?”

“We aren’t dating,” David says again, even though he knows it won’t make a difference.

“What are we talking about in here?” His mom says from the doorway between their rooms, because she’s just exactly what this conversation needs.

“We’re talking about how David’s going to ask Patrick to define the relationship.”

“Oh, Alexis.” Moira settles on his bed, and her shoes are still on, which adds insult to injury. “We must not counsel David to enumerate his fowl before they’ve emerged.”

“This is really fun for me,” David mutters. Then, louder: “Patrick and Stevie are at the same poker game Dad is at. That’s why they’re busy.”

“Oh?” Moira arches a brow. “And you weren’t invited to this little soiree?”

“It’s a stretch to call anything that involves Roland a soiree, but I appreciate the effort,” David says. “And anyway, I historically don’t do well with bluffing.”

Alexis nods. “That’s true. Do you remember that time you talked them into a higher ransom when I was in Bali?”

“That only happened because you wanted to keep your shoes.” David rubs at the bridge of his nose. “Okay, this has been lovely, but I’m going to do literally anything else. Read a book. Drop the straightener in the bathtub, maybe, just to see what happens.”

“Wait, I’m using the bathroom,” Alexis calls as David shuts the door behind him.

“Not anymore,” he yells back.

“He always did get so prickly about his paramours,” Moira muses, ostensibly under her breath. “Do you remember the one who told him they should only see each other at night?”

David restrains himself—barely—from banging his head against the door or throwing it open dramatically. He will not let himself prove his mother’s point. “I can still hear you!”

* * *

“Have you been working out? Because that looked effortless.” Patrick leans against the door and watches David unpack the grocery bags he’d slid onto the counter in Ray’s kitchen. Ted’s words keep banging through his head, but that just means that it’s the same as his new normal.

“Your support is noted and appreciated,” David says lightly. “Are you going to help me with this, or should I keep embarrassing myself?”

“I mean, if I have the choice, then—”

David makes a disapproving noise. “Come help me with this.”

And it shouldn’t be as hot as it is to hear David ask for what he wants. Patrick can’t make himself hold back from giving it to David. From giving most everything to David, honestly. “Why are you buying powdered sugar? You know that you have to cook this for it to be any good, right?”

David’s eyebrows do something complicated in connection with his mouth where it looks like he’s being pulled in at least three different directions. “I had heard a rumor, yes.”

“So you’re going to turn this powdered sugar into melted powdered sugar?”

“Your mom called the store yesterday,” David says, eyes trained on the bag of flour he’s setting on the counter carefully. He hates mess, so he’s probably afraid it will spontaneously combust and get everywhere.

“And told you the secret of powdered sugar?”

“I asked her if she had a recipe for those peanut thingies you mentioned.” David looks up now, and there’s something hopeful in his eyes that Patrick has to soothe. This is more of himself than David normally is comfortable revealing, emotionally speaking. And then he takes off his cardigan carefully, and it’s more of David than he’s used to seeing in a few ways. His tight white tee stretches over those broad shoulders David always tucks away and hides under layers of knits and hunches. There’s—that’s hair, on his arms, and it’s making it really hard to focus. Patrick shakes himself back to their conversation.

“You don’t have to do this. If I sounded like I needed it, I don't really. I’m okay not to do it. It's probably silly.”

“I mean, they sounded kind of good?” David shrugs and folds up his grocery bags neatly. “So it’s not like it’s a hardship.”

“It’s just that,” Patrick runs a hand through his hair. “We—you—worked all day. And you don’t have to do this with me just because I whined about missing them.”

“Well, I’m going to make them.” David taps at his phone. “You can help if you want.” He starts by sorting through Ray’s pots and pans for a baking dish, a few mixing bowls, and the measuring cups which unfortunately and unsurprisingly are branded with Ray’s face.

There’s a furrow in David’s brow that is turning something in Patrick’s stomach to liquid. But he has to ask one more time, because the idea of letting David do this for him makes him feel small and silly. Like he’s being placated, which he hates. “If you leave the stuff, I can make them tomorrow,” he offers. “I don’t think I’m up for it tonight, but I could bring you some on Friday.”

“No, it has to be—” David bites his lip. “I can do it tonight. Question: will Ray be upset if I use his stand mixer, and how can I shift the blame to you if so?”

And it’s sweet, what David’s trying to do. But the feeling of wanting to do something different, or be something different, or say something different is still tap-tap-tapping at the edges of his mind. Patrick sits at the table and pulls out his phone, flicking over to the store playlist. He can at least do David the service of choosing music that they both tolerate.

But David looks up when the music starts. “Actually, I brought headphones. I’m listening to this podcast on—”

“Oh, you can play that without headphones—”

“—the history of mending.” David’s clearly biting down a smile at the face Patrick’s making, so now he feels bad that he’s knocking David’s taste while David’s doing something nice for him.

“You can play it,” Patrick says reluctantly. He gets up and crosses the room to grab them each a drink, or something. “It sounds really interesting.”

“Mm, I believe you.” David looks at his phone and frowns. “But I need to concentrate on this, so I won’t be able to defend my tastes to the level I’d prefer against your comments.”

“Oh, my comments.” Patrick leans in to read which part of the recipe is tripping David up, but David holds up a floury hand.

“Get away. You said you didn’t want to make these.”

Patrick dodges and tucks himself under David’s raised arm, and that’s, well. That’s something. It’s warm there and Patrick wants to stay, but at the same time David is about to put the milk, butter, and vanilla in the bowl without beating them together in a smaller bowl first, so...priorities. “You're doing it wrong. Give me the milk.”

“No,” David says. His voice rises at the end like it’s a question.

“David.” Patrick ducks out of the place that he realizes too late David wasn’t pushing him away from and grabs for another bowl. “If you’re going to make these, I at least want to report back to my mom that they were good.”

“I go through all this trouble and I’m accused in this way.” David exhales through his nose and crosses his arms, but it looks like the way he got about those plungers Patrick keeps sneaking onto the display shelves along the back wall of the store. Like he’s enjoying the argument.

“I don’t mean to accuse you,” Patrick says, because he doesn’t. “It’s just, have you ever done this before?”

“I didn’t get any shells in when I cracked the egg,” David says patiently. “I checked. Do you have any concrete complaints?”

“No complaints.” Patrick can’t get the smile turned down properly, the way that he would if this were a real disagreement. He spares a second to marvel at the way David has pulled him so thoroughly out of his head. In record time, too. “Just thought you could use the help.”

“Well, I’ve been told before that I need a lot of help.” David leans his shoulder into Patrick’s for just a moment, sending warmth along Patrick’s arm and, totally unrelatedly, down his spine. The reminder of just how far they’ve come since the first time they were both under this roof makes him want to laugh, but he doesn’t want to laugh at David.

“You don’t need any help,” Patrick says. “Until it comes to chopping the peanuts, probably.” This all feels domestic in a way that Patrick hasn’t felt anything but suffocated by before, but he finds himself anxious for more.

“Ew,” David says. “I can fold stuff in, but I don’t see that in the recipe.”

“Yeah, that’s not—” Patrick bites down on the first three questions that come to mind. “Tell me more about this folding.”

“I would genuinely rather chop up my fingers.”

Patrick sucks in air through his teeth. “Graphic.”

“Not the worst thing I’ve been called.” David shrugs. “Not even the worst thing I’ve been called by you, if you’ll recall.”

“What else have I called you?”

“Pedantic, last week. Do you want the itemized list?”

“That’s not—no.” Patrick can feel his lower lip doing that embarrassing thing where it pushes out and makes him look approximately three years old. “I’m nice to you sometimes, too.”

“You’re nice to me exactly as much as I’d like you to be,” David says quickly.

Patrick presses his lips together. “Good to know.”

* * *

“These aren’t bad,” David admits through his second peanut square. He’d felt like such an idiot asking Marcy about the peanut thingies Patrick liked over the phone when she’d called the store that morning, but she’d been really lovely.

“Glad you enjoy,” Patrick says. “Considering that you made me make them.”

“I didn’t make you do anything.” David lifts a hand, probably for a dramatic point but he hasn’t decided yet, but pauses when he sees the look on Patrick’s face. He keeps waiting for the moment to come when he stops being so high-strung. Maybe when he finally turns thirty, or something, but it hasn’t happened yet. Maybe he’ll always be the way that he is.

“You didn’t make me do anything,” Patrick agrees. He picks up another square and presses it into David’s hand. There’s...something. In the look he levels at David. But David is saved from deciding what he should do about it by the clatter of his phone vibrating against the laminate countertop.

Mrs Brewer  
  
**Today** 5:45 PM  
Mrs Brewer: We’re checking into the motel now. The man at the desk said Ray’s is just across the street, so we should be there soon!  
  
David: I hope the roads weren’t bad, Patrick mentioned ice  
  
Mrs Brewer: Clear roads the whole way!  
  


“What’s Stevie up to?” Patrick asks. He slides a little closer on the couch, likely so he can look over David’s shoulder. God knows David has done that to Patrick enough times, but David still can’t really believe that he’s kept the surprise for this long and he’s not going to trip at the finish line.

“I text people other than Stevie, you know.” Deflection seems like a good first step, for all that it probably won’t hold out. It only has to last a few minutes.

“Oh?” Patrick asks, taking the bait beautifully. “Name five.”

David shifts his shoulders, pleased. “My mom texted me last night about whether I had stolen one of her wigs.” He frowns. Not an auspicious start. “And I text Alexis, and Jake asked me about a—”

He’s saved by the bell, quite literally, from shoving his entire foot so deep in his mouth that it may never dare to return.

Patrick frowns at the sound. “Ray was supposed to be in Elmdale all night.”

“Oh?” David asks. As though he hadn’t arranged for Ray to be out on a showing. Why Ray would start a boat sales business in the middle of Canadian winter is a mystery, but the timing is at least convenient. “Wonder if he forgot something.”

Patrick takes David in with narrow eyes, but before he can ask a question that will unravel all of David’s hard work David raises his eyebrow.

“You should get the door.” He can’t keep himself from bouncing the smallest bit on the couch in anticipation, but he’s pretty sure Patrick doesn’t see. He’d tease if he did.

Patrick scowls and goes, but David expected Patrick’s usual pout at being left out of a plan.

David gets up from the couch after Patrick’s attention is fully absorbed by his parents at the door. He figures he can grab his bag and a few more peanut squares for his trouble and say a quick hello before heading back to the motel for the night, but he pauses by the sink in the kitchen. He knows the feeling of not having enough time for what he wants to do, and he wants Patrick to. Patrick should have that time. He busies himself with the dishes, turning on the water and dumping soap into the sink while Patrick and his parents exclaim over each other in the doorway. It’s a soothing background, in a way.

“David?” Patrick calls. “Where did you go?”

David seriously considers not responding and disappearing through the garage door after the dishes are in the drying rack like some kind of June Cleaver poltergeist. 

But Patrick’s mom made a surprisingly on-point reference to _You’ve Got Mail_ over the phone, so he kind of wants to meet her in person. “In here.”

But he immediately regrets his decision when all three of them—Patrick, and his mother with her eyes doing the same twinkle Patrick’s do when they run out of product just as a new shipment comes in, and his father wearing a sweater that he’s pretty sure he’s seen Patrick in before—traipse into the kitchen in single file.

“Why are you doing the dishes?” Patrick asks.

“This is a strong start from someone who complains that I don’t sweep the store enough.” David slots the baking dish into the drying rack and pulls out the drain plug. “Careful, or I’ll think you don’t care if I do anything like this again.”

Marcy and Clint—he’s pretty sure Patrick’s dad’s name is Clint—are looking at him. The expressions on both of their faces aren’t identical but do speak to spending a lot of time together, kind of like his parents look when they talk about the parties Moira used to drag Johnny to. Their smiles are weird, unless that’s how parents look and David’s being the weird one. Hard to tell.

“Hi,” David says, once it’s clear that all three Brewers are content to stare at him in silence for possibly forever. “I’m David.” Then he wrinkles his nose. “I think you’re the only one I haven’t met,” he says to Patrick’s dad. “Clint, right?” He hopes that his mother’s chronic misremembering of names isn’t genetic with a fervor that is normally best confined to the consignment sales he will never tell Alexis about.

“Clint,” Patrick’s dad confirms. “Nice to meet you. Marcy spent most of the drive talking about Meg Ryan, and she says I have you to blame.”

“Thank, I think I said,” Marcy chimes in. And her voice is the same, which is soothing. David can feel his shoulders loosening. These people. He’s still not used to people like this. “You have him to thank.”

“How do you know David?” Patrick asks. Then something softens in his forehead when he turns to look at David. “Did you—”

“I called the store to ask about that candle you sent Aunt Lucy,” Patrick’s mom says. “And then David asked about the peanut squares and said you were free today and tomorrow if we wanted to surprise you for a visit.”

Patrick is looking at David like he did when he first ran through the business model for the store. There’s surprise there, and something like interest. “That’s really nice of David,” Patrick says slowly, “but we have a post-holiday sale that we’re running right now.”

“Please,” David bats away Patrick’s protestations. “I can take care of the store.”

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t,” David says. He needs to get away from this family and their loud eyes before he says something truly revealing. It’s a tightrope walk, and he’s feeling wobbly. “That’s what makes you so lucky.”

Patrick makes a low noise, one that might be a hum of agreement and can’t be anything else because David can’t give himself that kind of hope here. “One of the things, yes.”

And it’s physical, the reaction David has to that. His shoulders tip in and up toward his ears, and he has to consciously exhale and loosen the bunched muscles with a shake of his torso. “That’s—I should go. The point of all of this was for you all to spend some time together.”

Marcy crosses her arms and looks between David and Patrick. David doesn’t want to unpack whatever is going on with her face. Or with Patrick’s face. He can’t look at Clint because if he sees the same thing there, he’ll explode and get guts all over these peanut bars and that would be a waste of both his vision for the store and a perfectly adequate holiday treat. “We’d love it if you stayed, David,” she says. “We haven’t eaten yet, and Patrick is always saying that you order better than he does at the café. Your expertise might be needed.”

Patrick breathes out through his nose. “I order just fine,” he says. “I stick with sure things.”

The words, when they come, are part bitter and part sweet. “Not sure I can help if that’s your strategy,” David tells Marcy, “but I can text you a few recent favorites. Um, I really should go.” There’s a line somewhere between kindly letting Patrick’s parents monopolize him and looking like a hermit; David hopes he’s on the right side of it.

Still, he makes his excuses and waves off both Patrick and his mom, even when they ask what his dinner plans are, Patrick with a knowing look in his eye and a comment that he thought Stevie was planning to meet up with Jake that night. David does the best he can to make vague noises about his mom, or his sister, or even Jocelyn if it gets him out of Ray’s living room and the eyesight of two, maybe three people who all see straight through him.

Patrick  
  
**Today** 9:54 PM  
Patrick: Dropping my parents back off at the motel  
  
Patrick: You didn’t have to do that, David.   
  
David: I wanted to  
  
David: Did you have a good time  
  
David: Sorry, I don’t know how to talk to people about their parents  
  
Patrick: You make it look effortless, if that’s any consolation  
  
David: I’m not sure how but this feels like an attack on my character  
  
Patrick: That doesn’t sound like me.  
  
David: You specialize in attacking my character, though  
  
Patrick: Oh, sorry, this is Patrick, not Stevie. I can add her if you want?  
  
David: I would have thought seeing your parents would give you less time to bug me  
  
Patrick: Aw, I can always fit in my favorite pastime. Especially since the curling team didn’t have any openings this season.  
  
David: Your priorities worry me  
  
Patrick: I feel the same when I see you buy skincare  
  
Patrick: Anyway! I was trying to thank you, if you can believe it  
  
David: Oh sure  
  
Patrick: Seriously, David. Thanks.  
  
David: Don’t mention it  
  
David: Like actually don’t mention it  
  
David: Very uncomfortable with whatever this conversation has become  
  
Patrick: So you don’t want to hear that you made this the best holiday I’ve had in a long time?  
  
David: My mom needs help brushing out all of her wigs for the new year  
  
David: Anyway, ciao  
  


* * *

“I told you that you didn’t have to come in today,” David says before he looks up from the register.

“Have you been saying that to everyone who’s come in today?” Patrick shuts the door behind him.

David scoffs. “Please. Everyone’s at dinner across the street. Things will pick up again in an hour or so. Anyway, it’s lovely to see you but there’s nothing around here for your parents to do, so please rescue them from the motel and get out.”

Warmth starts at the tip of his head and drips slowly through his torso until it reaches his chest. He breathes out to release the tension. “They left after lunch. I thought I’d stop by and say thank you in person, though, since you didn’t respond to my texts.”

David fixes him with a look and points at the door. “If you came here for sincerity, I’m going to have to ask you to give me some space.”

“Are you really going to make me leave?”

“Only if you thank me.”

“I’m not going to thank you for asking me to leave.”

David frowns. “I think I’m going to let you stay, but only because some woman came in here five separate times to try to haggle on the price of that massage oil. It’s not even seasonal.”

And maybe it is there if he wants it, and maybe there isn’t a perfect moment. Or maybe he can make his own moment, and that will be the perfect moment because it’s the moment that it happened. “I hate to impose on your generosity more,” Patrick says. “But I did want to know if you wanted to get dinner.”

David wrinkles his nose. “The store is open through dinner, though.”

Patrick shrugs, hopefully more casual than he feels. “It’s like you said,” he says, heart pounding in his ears. It’s not the right time, and it’s not how he planned to do it, but it’s still David. And so he still wants to do it. Needs to, really. “No one’s going to be here for an hour.”

“Sure,” David steps out from behind the counter and moves to grab his bag.

It’s less enthusiasm than Patrick would hope for their first date, but he didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet while asking, so he’ll let it slide. He moves to the door so he can hold it open; some habits don’t die, and this is apparently one of them.

“Should I text Stevie or did you already do that?” David asks.

Patrick lets go of the door and hears it fall shut. “What?”

“Stevie.” David looks at him as though he’s the one not making sense. As though he hasn’t been honestly, horribly clear for months now.

“Really?” Patrick says. Then he takes a breath, because he’s not going to be _that_ person. “I mean, I know that you don’t want—that is, I know that you don’t want this. With me. And that’s—we’re fine. I’m fine.”

“What don’t I want with you?” David looks up from his phone. “You’re the one who asked about dinner. We can take a rain check or pick something up for here if you want.”

“Fuck, David, I’m not talking about dinner!” Patrick runs a hand over his eyes. He wants to get this over with. Perhaps unsurprisingly for someone who found most things easy growing up, he’s really bad at rejection, but he’s going to do his best to make this work. He had this conversation with himself before he even entertained the idea of talking to David about his feelings. He puffs out his cheeks in a way that’s really unattractive and probably doesn’t matter anymore. “Would you—I’m asking you on a date for New Year’s Eve. Would you kiss me on New Year’s Eve?”

David holds out a hand imperiously.

Patrick did not plan for that move. “What exactly do you want me to do with that?”

“Just,” David waves the hand. His energy is frenetic and quick, hands opening and closing seemingly without thought. He jerks his head toward the windows and then back to Patrick’s face. “Give me a second. I’m still trying to catch up.”

“You can take all the time you need,” Patrick says honestly.

“You want to go on a date with me.”

“That is correct.” Patrick isn’t sure what to do with his face. Or where he should look. “Does it help or hurt my cause to say that I’ve been wanting it for a while?”

David tilts back his head and laughs. “Why would that do anything other than help your cause?” Patrick wants to say something in response, but he can’t really see past the look in David’s eye. It’s almost like relief.

“Was it just my cause?” He doesn’t want to hear the answer. He can’t do anything but ask.

“Fuck.” David looks at the ceiling, studiously avoiding eye contact. “It wasn’t just you.”

“That’s reassuring,” Patrick has to press in closer to David right this moment. He catches David by the hips and pushes him against the front of the counter gently. There’s no need to shove, so he doesn’t, but he does gently suggest with his...hands. And hips.

David lifts his hands to his own cheeks and presses in like he’s grounding himself. “Patrick, why didn’t you tell me?”

Patrick breathes out, fiddling with the neck of David’s sweater. “I know how you get when you have a lot of things on your plate.”

“But I already had you on my plate,” David says quickly. Then he bites his lip. “It’s not that I—that is, if you were also thinking about it, then I was thinking about it.”

“Only if I was also thinking about it?” Patrick can’t help but ask.

“You already said that you were thinking about it, so it doesn’t really matter.” David lifts a hand and sets it on Patrick’s shoulder. The touch is light and barely there; Patrick presses up into it to get better pressure. He can take the weight. David takes the hint and raises his other arm and winds them together around the back of Patrick’s neck. Then he looks to the side, calculating something in his head. “Wait, you said New Year’s Eve?”

“I did.”

“That’s not for two more days,” David says. A smile starts at the curve of his cheek and works its way up to his eyes. “Why would you ask me so early?”

“I don’t know, David,” Patrick says. He lets himself linger on his—David’s—name the way that he’s been wanting to for longer than he cares to admit. “Call it a New Year’s resolution. I didn’t want to go any longer without asking you.”

“Patrick,” David’s chin tips down the slightest bit as he tries to catch Patrick’s eye. “That’s not how resolutions work. I had like four peanut bars this morning. Resolutions aren’t supposed to start until January first.”

Patrick shifts, but tries to keep his shoulders steady. He doesn’t want to dislodge David’s arms around him. “Well, I—”

“So you’re saying you just couldn’t wait another minute,” David teases.

Patrick could laugh at the joke in David’s tone. He could cry from relief that they can still do _this._ But his competitiveness rears its head before he can go down either path. “I mean, if I was too early for this resolution, then I guess we’ll just have to wait a few days.”

The look on David’s face is perfect. His eyebrows draw together and down, and there’s outrage in his eyes. His mouth drops open, what looks like five different sentences forming but none of them coming out. Finally, he settles on, “I don’t think that’s exactly what I said.”

“No, you know what?” Patrick presses closer to David from tip to toe and prays that David’s right about how long the rest of the town will be occupied with tonight’s meatloaf surprise. “I’ve waited a while to talk to you about this, and the last time I tried to ask you on a date you invited Stevie and didn’t even see the gift bag I brought. We might as well start it right.”

“How long is a while?” David asks desperately, still catching up. Patrick smiles and waits for the rest of his words to sink in. “Wait, _Stevie?_ Did you think my birthday was a date?”

Patrick nods, letting the grin that’s going to burst out of him one way or another bloom across his face. “I did.”

“You tried to take me on a date to the café?”

“I did that, too.”

“And now you’re telling me that we could have been kissing for six—seven—months and you want to wait even longer?” David lifts his hands to punctuate his frustration, and those strong hands work their way back toward Patrick’s shoulders absently. “Not acceptable terms, I’m afraid.”

Patrick closes his eyes because there’s trolling and then there’s being an idiot and he’s not going to let himself be an idiot any longer. The press of David’s lips is a tease just like his tone always is. It’s hot and sweet at the same time, and David makes a noise that would probably become Patrick’s favorite sound if he could hear past the roaring in his ears. He wants to live in this intimate moment forever, where all that exists is David’s mouth against his own, and maybe—he lets his hips sink forward against David, who’s held up by the counter, and lets their store, this thing they built together, hold them up as they start this new thing. Maybe more than just David’s mouth can exist against his own forever.

Forever is surprisingly short. The bell above the door rings, and there’s a familiar laugh from over Patrick’s shoulder.

“Sorry, fellas,” Johnny says. His hands are held out in front of him, but there’s a smile on his face. “I was just trying to say thank you. For the other night.”

David drops his head into Patrick’s shoulder. “If you’re not here to pay for all the food and wine, get out.”

“That’s, well,” Johnny clears his throat. “I wanted to know if you wanted the Christmas lights back or if we could store them for you at the motel. Maybe put them up there next year to advertise for the store?”

“So you came to ask for free decorations?” David’s response is sharp, but it’s softened by the way Patrick’s sweater muffles the bite.

“You can have them,” Patrick says. Anything to get David’s father at least a hundred meters from them before David pulls away and reveals Patrick’s whole...situation. “That's fine. You can have them.”

“Oh, thank you Patrick.” Johnny folds his arms and leans against one of their overflow holiday tables. “David, your mother asked me to find some more brie if you had any. Could I get that now?”

“Could you get out now?” David’s voice is doing something worrisome. “Patrick and I are kind of in the middle of something.”

“Well, David, the door to the store is unlocked.” Johnny seems to be gearing up for a lecture, which would be endearing except Patrick’s heard enough from Stevie to not blindly trust Johnny’s business instinct. Which is not even counting the David of it all. And the David of it all is worth a lot to him.

“Oh my god,” David says into Patrick’s shoulder.

Patrick prays for death but swallows and starts talking when it doesn’t come. “Mr. Rose, I’m sure David can bring some brie back later. We’re going to need to close now. Right now.”

Johnny _of courses_ his way out of the store and Patrick flips the sign behind him.

“Where were we?” David says, lifting his head from where he’d been hiding in Patrick with a little shimmy in his shoulders that Patrick supposes should be silly. Instead, it’s achingly hot. He’s pretty sure that most things David does in the near future will be like that for him.

Maybe the far future, too.

Still, either David likes his teasing or David needs to be exposed to it more so that he can find it endearing. Patrick feels almost punch-drunk from the high of David liking him back, of kissing him, of being David. “I don’t know,” Patrick says.

“You don’t know?”

And Patrick has probably overshot it, so he hastens to explain. “You’re right about resolutions,” he says. “Guess I won’t kiss you again until the new year.”

“Excuse me?” David plucks at Patrick’s arms tentatively, rubbing the material of his navy sweater between his fingers. “If this is a soft ghosting, I usually require something more direct.”

“David,” Patrick says. He pours all of his sureness, all of his certainty, into David’s name. “That’s not what it is.”

David pins him in place with nothing more than narrowed eyes. They track from his forehead to his chin and then back up to meet Patrick’s gaze. “Oh, you’re just being competitive.”

“Something like that,” Patrick says, feeling seen in a way that doesn’t prickle like it normally does.

“Something like that,” David says, nodding. “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

* * *

David regrets his challenge approximately eighty times in the next twenty-four hours. It would be more, except that Alexis monopolizes an entire afternoon talking about Ted’s questionable taste in gifts and a journal that she’ll never write in. David offers to take it off her hands, but she scoffs and says it’s about the message, David, not the gift itself.

After he’d talked her expectations down from diamond earrings to something cute and thoughtful that acknowledged her thoughts and then convinced her that that’s what Ted got her, it was time to meet Patrick for dinner. They’d found a different booth than their usual and split a burger and a buffalo chicken wrap when David couldn’t make up his mind.

“Hey, come here.” David puts a hand on Patrick’s chest and leans in close to his face. “You’ve got an eyelash.”

Patrick lets out a noise that’s almost too indecent for the café at the feel of David's soft hand against his cheek, but then again, Roland eats here daily. So it’s not so bad. “I’m making things weird,” Patrick says, lower lip poking out.

“Mm, this isn’t my most awkward dinner by far,” David says. “It’s not even our most awkward dinner together, I don’t think.”

“You don’t?” Patrick grabs on to the life raft with both hands.

“I don’t.” David gestures while still holding his glass, and Patrick’s glad for more than one reason that he didn’t slide after him into the same side of the booth, new relationship status be damned. He’d be drenched. “Remember when Rachel came to town and you didn’t want to talk to her alone so you made me and Stevie go to that taco place in Elmdale with you?”

“Oh, god.” Judging by the amount of times he’s apologized, Patrick still feels bad about that. He’d told Stevie and David to sit at a different table while he talked to Rachel—all he had wanted was some moral support that would make sure he didn’t willingly impale himself on any convenient swords and do something he would immediately regret like agree to move home or try again—and honestly, it hadn’t been too terrible. Weird, but not terrible.

“That guacamole made up for most of it, but it was still a weird one.”

“You did love that guacamole,” Patrick muses. “Maybe we should go back.”

David doesn’t know how Patrick can fit all that earnestness into such a compact frame. Is it exhausting for him to carry it around? “You hated it there.”

Patrick picks up one of David’s hands and turns it over, palm up and then down again, tracing a finger along the join of his thumb to the heel of his palm to his wrist. The sensation is a lot for David to deal with, practically speaking. David won’t let himself be the first to break this teasing game between them where they both want to kiss again but won’t let the other win. He won’t. Probably. “I didn’t hate it there. It was weird, but,” he pauses and catches David’s eye in a way that means the tally is going to tick up to eighty-one in the next minute. “You were there. So I couldn’t hate it.”

“Your standards are worrying,” David manages. Eighty-two comes when Patrick squeezes his wrist and then runs his calloused fingers over David's pulse.

“And now here we are,” Patrick says. “Couldn’t scare you away even with that.”

“It would take a lot,” David says. Then he clears his throat and changes the subject to the raisins Twyla keeps offering him for their leftover prosecco and what they’re supposed to do with that.

One more day.

* * *

Patrick is woken up by the clatter of his phone against his nightstand. He set an early alarm so he could take in the brisk air on a walk around town in the morning; unfortunately, he’ll have to save the longer hikes for the first thaw. But it’s earlier even than that, and the name accompanying three missed texts has him worried instantly. David is usually only pried out of his bed with the promise of coffee or the necessary requirement of opening the store. And even then it only works sometimes.

David  
  
**Today** 4:55 AM  
David: Patrick  
  
David: Are you awake  
  
David: Oh god you’re one of those people who sets your phone to do not disturb overnight aren’t you  
  
Patrick: HOW are you awake  
  
Patrick: I’m not even awake  
  
David: Are you at Rays  
  
Patrick: What is happening?  
  
Patrick: Yes I’m at Ray’s  
  
David: Did you know  
  
David: That in Kiritimati  
  
David: It’s almost the new year  
  


Patrick’s suddenly wide awake. Now that the moment is here—and of course David would still turn everything sideways in the most endearing, misguided way—he doesn’t know what to do first. Well, he has to brush his teeth first. And he only has two minutes to get downstairs. Should he wear something else? David probably looks gorgeous and untouchable in an exceedingly touchable sweater. But he only has, shit, one minute.

David  
  
Patrick: Fascinating news  
  
Patrick: Don’t move I’m coming down  
  


He spits his toothpaste into the kitchen sink and sets the toothbrush on the counter with a clatter, then rushes toward the door just as the clock in the living room clangs out the hour.

David’s leaned against the frame of the door, gray joggers and white tee under a black zip-up. He looks soft and warm and lovely and like everything Patrick wants to see for more new years than he should probably be comfortable saying this early on. He fiddles with the frames of his, _fuck,_ glasses. He’s wearing glasses. The clock keeps clanging and Patrick is getting off-track.

“Hi,” David says, almost too softly for Patrick to hear him over the clock which is the best and worst thing he’s ever heard. “Sorry, you were asleep, and—”

But Patrick can’t wait any longer, because after the clock stops chiming this moment might break and he won’t take that risk. He grabs David’s arms to hold him in place because if he’s not a real person and instead some half-baked dream Patrick will probably cry and pushes up, up, up on the balls of his feet until his lips meet David’s. He tastes like mint, because at this time of morning of course he brushed his teeth before coming over, but then he exhales and his mouth relaxes and Patrick licks along the seam of his lips until he opens up and he tastes like something so perfectly him that Patrick will never be able to name or quantify.

Normally the idea of something so unknowable being so close would itch at Patrick like a tag in the back of his sweater that needs to be removed, but he already knew that David was a class unto himself, so it fits, in a way. He doesn’t know how he made it two days. He doesn’t know how he’s supposed to make it two more minutes when this ends, so he prolongs it. He lifts one arm from David’s bicep and winds it in the hair on the back of David’s head, using the leverage to tilt David’s head and press further into his mouth.

David pulls back just far enough to catch his breath; Patrick tries to do the same but then he looks at David in his glasses and it becomes a futile effort. “We don’t have to do more,” David says. His voice is lower, rougher than Patrick has heard it before. He wants to hear David talk like that again. Immediately, preferably. “I didn’t come over because—it’s just, I know it’s a lot this early in the morning.”

Patrick suspects that the _it_ David is referring to is actually himself, and that can’t stand. “You’re the right amount for me at any time in the morning.”

David presses his lips together but it doesn’t do anything to hide his joy at that declaration. “I truly wish I could tell you the same. This is an exception I don’t want you to get used to.”

“Then I’d better make the most of it,” Patrick murmurs. He grabs for David’s hand and runs a thumb along David’s long, lithe fingers. “Want to go back to sleep for an hour or two?”

“Already taking me to bed,” David says lightly.

“To sleep,” Patrick insists. He wants to cross his arms and pout exaggeratedly at David. He wants to throw himself into David’s arms and knock him flat on his back on Ray’s stoop, making out until the next new year. He lands somewhere in the middle and pulls David upstairs by the hand, stopping him every so often to wind a hand behind David’s back, or around his neck, or into his hair and kiss him. 

And then, when they finally make it upstairs, Patrick pulls David’s arm around his torso tight and closes his eyes. He likes this moment, where they are. He likes what this could mean about the next day, the next month. The next year, if he lets himself think like that. While he’s wrapped up in David like this, he lets himself think like that.

* * *

Patrick  
  
**Today** 11:36 AM  
David: Where did you go  
  
Patrick: I’m making you breakfast  
  
Patrick: Don’t move  
  
David: Not exactly a hardship  
  
David: For posterity, though:  
  
David: Oh, are you sure? I would love to help you cook the foods  
  
Patrick: Very convincing  
  
Patrick: I’ll be back upstairs by noon, don’t worry  
  
David: I mean, not that I don’t want to see you, but why by noon?  
  
Patrick: New Year’s in Jakarta  
  
David: This wasn’t exactly my intention when I came over this morning  
  
Patrick: Is that a complaint?  
  
David: Back to the food, please  
  
David: You don’t have long until noon  
  


* * *

“Are you sure that you don’t want to do something different? Something at a restaurant, maybe?” Patrick fiddles with the corner of the pillow on David’s bed. He’s watching David fiddle with the projector he borrowed from Ted and overthinking, which is quickly becoming his holiday standard.

“Stevie’s with Twyla, and Alexis and Ted are doing something I don’t want any details about in Elm Ridge. What else is there to do?”

“I just thought that we could go somewhere together.” A rush of lame keeps Patrick from finishing his thought or seeking comfort in David’s neck, that sturdy, warm place that he’s trying to mark out as his own. “Make it special, or something. It’s technically our one-year anniversary too, you know.”

“It’s already special,” David says patiently. Patrick still doesn’t know how he can just say these things.

“Still,” Patrick says, reaching into the pocket of his jacket, “I have something for you.”

David turns to look at him, all thoughts of watching _When Harry Met Sally_ visibly overtaken by the tone Patrick’s using. “Why are you talking to me like I’m a vendor we’re trying to bring on at the store?”

“I always talk to you like that.” Patrick tucks his prize behind his back and widens his eyes at David in the way his boyfriend says is dangerous to his health. “Anyway, I have something for you.”

“This is—you wouldn’t do this on a holiday. Would you? You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t do what on a holiday?” Patrick asks innocently. “Wouldn’t offer you this one-of-a-kind New Year’s headband?” He pulls it out from behind his back in all its gold-fringed glory and relishes the journey David’s face takes from confusion to disgust before he lands on reluctant acceptance.

“You better have a matching one,” David says, holding out a hand. “I refuse to be subjected to this by myself. 

“Wouldn’t matching with me be incorrect?” Patrick knows he’s having too much fun with this, but David honestly makes it too easy sometimes. “That’s what you told your dad when he gave us those sweaters.”

“Those sweaters were green,” David reminds him. As though Patrick could forget any part of David’s diatribe against Johnny’s taste. “And screen-printed. And the town's name was on them.”

Patrick goes back to his jacket for his own party hat, puts it on after getting an approving nod from David, and redirects his boyfriend to setting up the movie. While David’s busy testing the connection between the projector and his phone, Patrick reaches back into his jacket. David made fun of him for all the pockets, but he’s got cranberry chutney, the crackers David prefers even though the cracked sesame always gets stuck in his teeth, and some of Heather’s seasonal goat cheese because he’s not an idiot. He knows David better than to bring him snacks and forget cheese.

There’s one more thing, too, and Patrick tucks it under the pillow while David’s not looking. 

“We should be ready to go,” David says, turning from the projector to look at Patrick and going soft from his shoulders to the skin around his eyes when he sees the spread Patrick’s laid out. “What’s all this?”

“I wanted to make it a little bit special.” Patrick shoves his hands deep in his pockets.

“You certainly managed that.” This is Patrick’s favorite David, the one who lets his feelings out unthinkingly. But it’s not a fair metric, since Patrick falls a little further every time David reveals something new about himself, hard-fought as each new tidbit is. 

Patrick takes the last few steps between them and tilts his head up to kiss the surprise off of David’s face. He thinks he’ll probably get to see that look again tonight.

After all, there’s a box of rings sitting under the pillows and a question burning in the pit of his stomach. And he has another resolution to keep.


End file.
